At least where I live, basically everything that's on discovery, national geographic and the history channel now is just "experts" talking (reading a script) about "hitler's secret sex life" or some such thing, interspersed with a re-enactment shot or one of the "experts" walking around a slightly relevant building.
Lack of depth? Wrong. Just go beyond the usual pop-sci stuff on YT.
You can go as deep as you want. Surely it won't be "as fun" or "tiktok sized" but if you want depth it's there
Two that my 5-year-old loves are OddAnimalSpecimens who could easily have been on BBC children's programming in the 1980s, and Terragreen who would have been his ITV counterpart :-)
Probably the most entertaining child-friendly programme you can watch right now is whatever Jake Carlini is doing. Some wee guy in a house in Austin, Texas is coming up with better stories, better production values, and better life values than any of the "proper" children's TV productions, except maybe Sesame Street.
If you like big 4x4s (and who doesn't?) then Matt's Off Road Recovery is pretty good. Utah looks lovely, and of course they're culturally fairly free of rude words so that's pretty okay for children.
Quiet Nerd is another of my son's favourites, he builds little electric-powered campers and drives them out into the woods near where he lives.